Political Quotes

“I am so glad to be with you this evening. So many people in Washington and in other parts of the country believe that it was the intent of the Founding Fathers to bleach from our society our religious beliefs, and you have heard others speak this evening that that is not the case. In particular, I would like to share with you, in the short time that we have remaining, the words of Thomas Jefferson from that famous letter to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists, because everybody focuses on one phrase and not the entire letter. He opens with salutations to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists, and then begins the meat of the letter: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ``make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,'' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the Nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.…”